A few years ago I got stopped in a traffic stop for something dumb (I think my front license plate wasn't on), and the cop was a real jerk to me. I had two kids under two in the car and both were screaming their heads off. They had been up all night and we were all exhausted.

I was visibly annoyed and the cop just screwed with me and kept me waiting for 20 minutes while he wrote my ticket. My baby at the time (our older son) had an undiagnosed reflux situation that got really bad in the carseat and he'd scream so loud & long he'd turn purple.

Finally I was like fuck this, I'm getting out and holding him on the side of the road while this cop finishes my ticket because I'm not sitting here and listening to him gurgling on his own spitup forever. So I went to get out of my car and the cop LOST IT.

Ran over, screaming, went to pull his gun. I was like whoa dude, I am a very smelly suburban mom w/o a bra on. I'm wearing my husband's basketball shorts. I've got babies in the car screaming. CHILL OUT. He yelled at me, wrote me several more tickets for anything he could find.

(In my defense I had just jumped in the car to drive Seth to the train and was driving right home. Did not anticipate running into anyone on the way). So I Facebooked the story and @RobGeorge said at the time something along the lines of "You're lucky you're white."

At the time I won't lie, I was kind of annoyed he made it about race because JUST LET ME BE MAD. But I started to notice when I was driving that when I'd drive by speed traps, when I'd slow down to within ten MPH of the speed limit, the folks on my right were 10 below.

And I noticed those folks who slowed to a crawl were always black men. And that stuck with me. I had always heard about black men fearing the cops, but it didn't totally seep into my head until I noticed how black men were SO much more careful to not be stopped.

They knew they didn't have the luxury that I have as a white woman. A luxury I wasn't necessarily aware of until Rob pointed it out and I started noticing it.

tl;dr Listen to your black friends. When they tell you there's a problem, there's a problem.